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TheStreet Ratings Top 10 Rating Changes

Verisk Analytics Inc (VRSK - Get Report) has been upgraded by TheStreet Ratings from hold to buy. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its notable return on equity, revenue growth, expanding profit margins, solid stock price performance and growth in earnings per share. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had generally high debt management risk by most measures that we evaluated.

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Highlights from the ratings report include:

Compared to other companies in the Professional Services industry and the overall market, VERISK ANALYTICS INC's return on equity significantly exceeds that of both the industry average and the S&P 500.

The revenue growth greatly exceeded the industry average of 18.6%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues rose by 14.0%. This growth in revenue appears to have trickled down to the company's bottom line, improving the earnings per share.

Investors have apparently begun to recognize positive factors similar to those we have mentioned in this report, including earnings growth. This has helped drive up the company's shares by a sharp 39.63% over the past year, a rise that has exceeded that of the S&P 500 Index. Regarding the stock's future course, although almost any stock can fall in a broad market decline, VRSK should continue to move higher despite the fact that it has already enjoyed a very nice gain in the past year.

VERISK ANALYTICS INC has improved earnings per share by 13.2% in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has demonstrated a pattern of positive earnings per share growth over the past two years. We feel that this trend should continue. During the past fiscal year, VERISK ANALYTICS INC increased its bottom line by earning $1.63 versus $1.31 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($1.96 versus $1.63).

The gross profit margin for VERISK ANALYTICS INC is rather high; currently it is at 60.60%. It has increased from the same quarter the previous year. Along with this, the net profit margin of 19.60% significantly outperformed against the industry average.

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Verisk Analytics, Inc. provides proprietary data, analytics methods, and embedded decision support solutions for detecting fraud in property and casualty (P&C) insurance, mortgage, and healthcare industries primarily in the United States. The company has a P/E ratio of 26.6, below the average diversified services industry P/E ratio of 27.5 and above the S&P 500 P/E ratio of 17.7. Verisk Analytics has a market cap of $7.99 billion and is part of the
services sector and
diversified services industry. Shares are up 20% year to date as of the close of trading on Tuesday.